For any prawn noodles devotee, the big prawns’ version is, beyond any reasonable doubts a most blessed choice. In all honesty, $5 for a bowl of prawn noodles is comparatively cheap considering the fact that $5 can barely get you a meal at any of the fast food chains.

It’s just a a pity that we don’t see any big harmful Char Kway Teow or big sized satay in the market though I have to say that big or small satay is still a satay while a giant harm may actually look quite disgusting so if there is one food that is worth my $5 in a hawker centre, it is still the king prawn noodles.

The reality of getting king prawns in your prawn noodles nowadays is getting as common as upsizing your meals in Mcdonalds. One of the reasons is because we have stalls like Whitley Road Big Prawn Noodles who takes the effort to “globalize” it’s king prawn noodles brand by setting up a few stalls around the island. For those who remember, the story of Whitley Road Big Prawn Noodles began a few decades back at the Whitley Road flyover hawker centre where they moved to Lorong Telok sometime in the 90s and then went on to set up two more branches at Old Airport Road and Thomson Road.

Whitley Road Big Prawn Noodles $5

Like many of the other big prawn noodle stalls, Whitley Road Big Prawn Noodles has a range of prices from $4 to as much as $15. Here it goes a little more enticing by offering things like pig’s tail, pig’s liver or ribs with all kinds of combination at different prices so your choice is seriously aplenty.

For my $5 bowl, it only came with 2 middle size prawns which were sliced into half with the heads but upon closer inspection, I realised that whatever that should be inside the prawn’s head were missing! It was only the shell of the head that was attached to the prawns. And the prawns weren’t very fresh, so it lost 3 points there for me.

The soup was quite good with that familiar charming & pleasurable prawn-thrashing flavours and definitely comparable to Wah Kee or Hoe Nam. Where it fails for me is the chilli sauce which was very oily and a little bland in taste and flavour.

Though they are purportedly one of the better big prawn noodles around, the value of my $5 here didn’t score very well. For $5, I thought it should be quite easy to make a bowl of prawn noodle adorable but I was left figuring where the bulk of $5 went. Not sure if a more expensive version can do justice but if I want to spend $10 for a bowl of prawn noodles, something is telling me that it might be better to do so at Wah Kee or Hoe Nam.

Whitley Road Big Prawn Noodles $5

Price: $5

Conclusion: Soup was shiok, everything else failed to hit the spot for me. If you like prawn’s soup and nothing else, this is it for you.